China has a lot of festivals and holidays. Some of the most important festivals are Chinese New Year, Full Moon Festival, and Dragon Boat Festival. For the Full Moon Festival, we cook a special Moon Cake and for Dragon Boat it is sticky Chinese rice pudding.

During Chinese New Year, dumplings are one of the major foods eaten. We write, carve, and make paper cuts of Fu meaning "fortune" or "good luck". Fu is a common Chinese tradition at New Year and can be seen on the entrances of many Chinese homes worldwide. We also buy firecrackers and have fireworks. During this special day we make special garlic vinegar (Laba vinegar) and eat it with dumplings. This celebration is really family time; people visit each other and give each other red envelopes with some money and also some gifts.

I chose this recipe because it is traditional food in China and everyone knows how to make these dumplings. We call these dumplings "Jiaozi". You can use almost anything as a filling, and you can boil, steam, or pan fry them. On New Year's Eve, we make dumplings in the evening before midnight and then keep them outside to freeze them before we cook them. At midnight, we have fireworks and after that we go inside and everybody eats dumplings.

This month we're celebrating Asian Heritage Month and will be cooking baked pork chop rice (焗豬扒飯) with Yami.

Yami explains: "This dish has a home in almost every Cha Chaan Teng (茶餐廳), also known as Hong Kong’s tea-serving cafes. Cha chaan teng food is some of my favorite kinds of foods because it was almost a blend of my two cultures: Chinese and Western cuisine. My name is Yami, born and raised in Hong Kong. Everyone in Hong Kong loves Cha Chaan Teng, fast, casual and affordable, especially when you only have 30 mins lunch break, I always go for baked porkchop rice (焗豬扒飯)!"

This month we're celebrating Chinese New Year will be cooking dumplings with Sam.

To start with I am Sambredi Shrestha, but you can call me Sam or sammy it’s more convenient call. I am originally from Nepal but I live and worked in Hongkong as a chef. I moved to Canada last year on September, and there’s a lot of places i would like to explore in the future. However i am loving whistler very much, I find people living with peace and happily with nature. 

The dish that I am making is one of the important dish in Chinese cuisine, that was originated on the Han dynasty around 200 BC, by Zhang Zhongjing a Chinese medicine practitioner. It is said that, it was a difficult winter and many people were experiencing ill effects from cold. To help the people warm up during this period of time, Zhongjing took mutton, herbs and chilli and wrapped them in a dough, then steamed them. This pillow like steam dish helped many people keep warm and prevent the cold. Which now is called dumpling. And it can be made in different shape and flavours too. 

We make dumpling today to pay the respect of the history of cuisine and keep ourselves warm during this winter and most importantly to enjoy the dish together.

The fun part is that in my country we love eating dumplings too but we call it Momo, when I find out dumpling are so famous in Hongkong it brought smile on my face because I love making and eating dumpling.